


Rooftop Sitting

by bluspirits



Series: Defensive Maneuvers [2]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Explicit Language, Friendship, Gen, Post-Season/Series 02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-09
Updated: 2016-07-09
Packaged: 2018-07-22 12:58:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7440214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluspirits/pseuds/bluspirits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jessica Jones finds herself sharing an office with a sad lawyer. And most nights a week, sharing a roof with Daredevil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rooftop Sitting

**Author's Note:**

> So this takes place at the same time as Renter's Insurance. I'm not sure this connects in to the other enough for that to be obvious, sorry, but it is happening at the same time. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

"The fuck are you doing on my roof?" Jessica asks, staring down Daredevil, who is sitting on the edge of the building's roof, legs swinging slightly. He looks sad. His shoulders are hunched, his posture bad, and his position isn’t one of someone injured, or who just stopped by quickly to rest. He's been here a while. 

 

She shakes her head. She just came up here to get a break for a minute, to be away from the heartbroken client who was now crying loudly on Malcolm’s shoulder. It’s the first night in the new office, and she just wanted to get out for a minute and maybe to get away from the new office mate who looks like he might start crying. And instead, she finds this.

 

"Your roof?" he turns to her and asks, face expressionless, but sounding the tiniest bit amused.

 

"Yeah, my roof," she rests her hands on her hips. “I work in this building, so, my roof.”

 

“Okay.” he nods, but doesn’t move or explain himself.

 

“I don’t see you moving.”

 

“Do I have to?” he manages to avoid sounding like a dramatic ten year old, but it’s a near miss.

 

“Do you want to keep your face?” Jessica asks, her voice full of fake friendliness. She rolls her eyes.

 

Daredevil makes an ‘eh’ kind of humming noise and gives a vague shrug. Okay, so he’s not that attached to his face. Good to know.

 

He stands, giving her a slightly better view of him. He looks ridiculous. Tight red body armor with actual horns. Little stubby horns on his head. It looks like it would fit in much better fighting aliens with the Avengers, not sitting here on a dirty Manhattan rooftop. But it would look stupid anywhere. And the horns are definitely overkill.

 

Like, we get it, you’re a fucking superhero.

 

Still, seeing him is like a what if. A look at what she could’ve been. She could have been doing this. Wearing a stupid costume, running around rooftops, punching people in alleys. She could’ve gotten a ridiculous name in the papers. She could’ve been called a hero.

 

She blinks, tries to pull her mind back from that train of thought.

 

Daredevil looks like he’s considering picking a fight. He shifts, fists clenched. But he decides better of it and slumps, giving her what she assumes is a glare, though she can’t be sure with the mask. He heads for the edge and jumps off the building.

 

“Asshole,” she mutters as she turns to go back inside.

 

\-------

 

The new office is a change for Jessica, though not the completely terrible one she expected it to be. Other than the annoyingness of the fact that it's a change, it's a nice place. Plus it also comes with the unexpected perk of a resident superhero.

 

One who proves surprisingly hard to get rid of. And annoying too.

 

After the first night, she begins to check the roof for trespassers when she’s bored, or when she drops by the office late at night. She’ll go out to the roof, stand in the doorway and look around, see if she spots any horned idiots slouching in the shadows. If there’s no one there, she might hang out for a bit. If she spots someone, she’ll either curse him out or just turn around and go back inside, depending on how tired she is.

 

She’s beginning to feel like those old people who yells “Get off my lawn!” at the neighborhood teenagers.

 

Daredevil’s there at least once a week. The longer it goes on, the less she knows how to feel about it. She doesn’t know why he picked this roof originally, but she’s sure by the fifth time that he keeps picking it because he knows she’s looking. He finds this funny.

 

She’s not sure she does, but she did find herself close to laughing after almost chasing him around the rooftop access door. Sometimes it’s funny. A nice break, playing hide and seek with a superhero.

 

By the third week, she has to remind herself to be annoyed.

 

\-------

 

“Okay, off. Get the fuck off. Now,” Jessica stomps over to Daredevil, again sitting on the edge of the roof. He turns but doesn’t otherwise move. She stares him down and points towards the next building over, a pretty clear ‘leave’ gesture.

 

It’s been a shitty day, protecting a girl from a stalker that hits a little too close to home, and she can’t bring herself to be amused by this asshole right now. Also, she’s a little drunk.

 

She reaches out to grab his shoulder and pull him up, but he leans out of the way and stands on his own.

 

“Are you okay?” he asks, and he actually sounds concerned, like he knows her. 

 

“I’m fucking fine,” she growls. He doesn’t say anything, just tilts his head, but he doesn’t seem convinced. He’s up pretty close into her personal space now, less than an arm’s length away. She moves to shove him, but again, he leans to the side and avoids her hand.

 

“I’m fine!” she yells, not sure why she’s telling him this, not sure who she has to convince. Things haven’t really been as fixed as she’d hoped they’d be after everything. Things haven’t gone away the way she let herself think maybe they might. (she might not be fine)

 

But why would she talk to him? Does she think he’ll understand, or something? Does she think he cares?

 

Her fingernails dig into her palms as her hands form fists. He’s still staring at her in that creepy way he does. (why is he looking at her like that? she’s not his to stare at.)

 

She tenses up. Her arm flies out, trying to punch him. He sidesteps, and she’s left hitting nothing but air. So she takes another swing, which he also dodges smoothly.

 

“Hey, hey,” he steps back from her and holds up both hands in surrender, voice slow like he’s talking to a spooked animal. It doesn’t calm her down. She throws another punch, and this time, instead of moving, he catches it in his right hand.

 

A bad idea. She’s moving fast, with some serious power. He can’t stop the punch immediately, barely slows it down, and his arm is forced backward in a way that looks pretty painful. He grimaces, the kind of expression you make when you hear nails on chalkboard, and bites his lip.

 

She pulls her fist back from his grasp.

 

“Shit.” he says, before she can consider apologizing.

 

“Yeah,” she agrees. The anger is slipping away, leaving her feeling empty.

 

“Shit,” he repeats, louder and stronger this time. His hands have dropped back to his sides, and the one she hit doesn’t look quite right. “You’re strong.” he sounds impressed, happy even.

 

“Yeah.” she thinks maybe she should say sorry, but he doesn’t seem to care.

 

He shakes out his injured arm, a bad idea, from the look on his face when he does it.

 

“I’m fast too,” she says, and she thinks that for them that might count as an apology when she sees him smile. She hasn’t seen him smile in the whole time he’s been hanging around here. She was sure he’d been coming back because he found it funny, but she’d never seen him smile.

 

“Really?” he asks, not disbelieving but wanting to know more.

 

“I can fly too,” she adds, letting herself smile.

 

He shakes his head, and his smile grows. “That’s amazing.”

 

“I mean, I’m not great at it, and it’s more like controlled falling, but yeah.”

 

He flexes his fingers, “I can hear your heartbeat,” he says, and she thinks that this is his apology, for coming here all the time, for making her uncomfortable, but all she can think to say is, “What?”

 

She didn’t think this guy had superpowers. 

 

When she doesn’t say anything else, he stops smiling, slumps a little. She watches him lean back and tense up, bracing himself for something. Rejection, an attack, she's not sure. 

 

“No shit?” she says thoughtfully.

 

“No shit,” he agrees. He’s quiet, but beginning to relax.

 

“So, are you like, a human polygraph?” it’s not a flashy power, but she’s starting to think of ways it could be useful. “What else can you do?”

 

“Yeah. I can tell when people are lying, stuff like that. All my senses are really good.”

 

“Really good?”

 

He nods, and smiles a little, but doesn’t say anything else.

 

“That’s cool,” she says.

 

“You can fly,”

 

“Kind of.” she corrects.

 

“Still. Flying. And super strength.” from his tone, that’s obviously better than super-senses, in his opinion.

 

There’s a long, surprisingly comfortable silence. She stares off at the city and wonders why the superhero takes time out of his saving people schedule to bother her. She doesn't come up with an answer. 

 

“Okay. Nice bonding moment. Now get the fuck off. This is trespassing,” she breaks the silence suddenly and waves her hands at him, but this is different from the annoyed shouting of before. It’s a little bit more of a shared joke now.

 

“I don’t think trespassing is what I’m going to end up getting arrested for,” he says, beginning to walk backwards towards the edge of the roof.

 

“Yeah? You wanna test that out?”

 

He shakes his head, and she waits, tapping her foot against the roof.

 

“See you tomorrow,” he finally says with a grin, and jumps off the roof of the building with a backflip like the show-off she’s learning that he is.

 

“Asshole,” she whispers with a small smile, knowing now that he can hear her.

 

\-------

 

She nearly walks into one of his legs when she goes up to the roof the next night. He’s sitting on top of the rooftop access door, legs hanging right near the door, in her face as she enters.

 

He jumps down once she’s out of the way, landing easily in the light of the doorway, which gives her an even better view of the stupid costume.

 

She can’t help laughing a little. He tilts his head questioningly.

 

“Sorry. Just. Wow.” she shakes her head. “Can you see that outfit? Did someone seriously tell you it was scary? Cause, I hate to tell you, but they were wrong.”

 

He frowns. “They seem scared when I’m punching them.”

 

“That’s because you’re attacking them. Most people are scared of the guy breaking their face, even when he’s dressed like bondage satan.”

 

“It’s armor. It protects me.” he crosses his arms.

 

“The horns _are _cute,” she admits, reaching out and flicking at them, thinking too late he might not appreciate that. But he leans into it a little.__

__

__“They’re not cute.” he protests._ _

__

__“But you admit it’s stupid?”_ _

__

__He shrugs, “I wouldn’t know.”_ _

__

__“You seriously never looked at in actual lighting?”_ _

__

__“Nope.” he smiles at this for some reason._ _

__

__She rolls her eyes._ _

__

__“Jessica, whatever I did to piss you off last night, I’m sorry,”_ _

__

__“How do you know my name?” Jessica asks slowly, ignoring the apology._ _

__

__“I heard it. I heard your coworker, Malcolm, say it.” he taps the side of his helmet, indicating his ears. “Sorry.”_ _

__

__“Right, superpowers,” she pauses, “You’ve been listening to me?”_ _

__

__“I can’t really help it,” he says, apologetic and unsure. “I wasn’t trying, I was just up here, and I could hear you two talking.”_ _

__

__“Does that happen a lot?” her voice is cold now._ _

__

__“Not really,” he assures her. “I try not to, and usually when I’m up here you’re not in the office, so there’s nothing to hear.”_ _

__

__“The other guy, Murdock, he doesn’t make any noise?” she knows he doesn't when she's around, but she's not always there._ _

__

__“Nothing worth listening to.” Daredevil shrugs. “Sorry, I know it’s creepy.”_ _

__

__“Yeah, it is.” she agrees, still angry. She sits down on the roof. He shifts awkwardly, obviously unsure whether she wants him to leave or not._ _

__

__She’s not happy. Someone watching her, listening to her, that’s not good. She doesn’t want to say scary, but it’s not a good feeling. She takes deep breaths, resists the urge to punch the guy again._ _

__

__“Sorry.” he says again. He sounds genuinely upset. Then after a few more seconds, he walks away. Jessica is glad._ _

__

__\-------_ _

__

__He shows up again a few weeks of no appearances. Maybe he wanted to give Jessica time to cool down. He arrives after Jessica is already up on the roof. She hears the sound of something hitting the rooftop and turns around to see him standing in the dark across the roof._ _

__

__“I keep fucking it up.” he says, moving a bit closer, but keeping a solid distance between them._ _

__

__“What?” she says. Their past encounters haven’t been great, that’s true._ _

__

__“I want to be friends, but.” he shrugs. “I’ll stop coming here, if you want. Sorry.”_ _

__

__Jessica watches him fidget, fingers twitching. She makes a decision. “You can keep hanging out here. You obviously really like this roof.”_ _

__

__She might not be here every time, and she can’t promise she won’t punch him again, but she doesn’t think she’d mind him showing up again. He beats the shit out of criminals, which she can appreciate. And he apologized. He apologized, backed off, and gave her a out. And yes, that’s a real low standard she has, but she thinks he might be okay. Maybe._ _

__

__“Yeah. It’s a nice roof.” he sounds very relieved. He’s very attached to this roof. He steps forward cautiously._ _

__

__“Why do you like it so much?” she asks. There has to be a reason he showed up here. The later times can be explained by annoying her, but the first time can't. There has to be some kind of reasoning._ _

__

__“No reason,” he says too quickly, and Jessica is now completely sure that there’s a reason. She raises an eyebrow._ _

__

__“What?” he asks, sensing her skepticism._ _

__

__“No reason?”_ _

__

__“I mean, it’s a roof. What other reason do I need?” he’s awkwardly laughing, a sign of a shitty lie._ _

__

__“None, that’s fine. I believe you.” she sounds very insincere. He sighs and crosses his arms._ _

__

__“It’s just a roof.” he repeats, steadier this time. He walks past her to the edge of the roof and sits down. She waits a minute, watching him sit there, wondering, before following. She sits next to him, a foot or two away. They sit there in silence, staring at the city._ _

__

__It’s nice. She sees his point. It's a nice roof._ _

__

__\-------_ _

__

__“Don’t you have criminals to be beating up?” Jessica asks, leaning in the doorway. Daredevil is actually laying on the ground, in the middle of the roof, one arm over his chest. He looks defeated._ _

__

__“Yeah.” he says. He doesn’t move though._ _

__

__“How’s the new laying down and waiting for them to come to you strategy working out?” she walks over and looks down at him. She can’t tell if his eyes are closed through the mask. “I wish that would work for me.”_ _

__

__He doesn’t smile. She stares at him._ _

__

__“I just can’t tonight.” he says, with none of the defensiveness she thought would come with that statement._ _

__

__“Can’t?” she says. She thinks he might nod, it’s hard to tell._ _

__

__She sits down next to him. She might have some idea now why he’s here so inconsistently and why he hangs out on a roof for hours at a time instead of fighting people._ _

__

__“Okay. That’s okay.” she nods. She’s not comforting, but she feels like she has to say something._ _

__

__“No. It’s not okay. People get hurt because I’m weak.” he whispers._ _

__

__“You’re not weak for this. It happens.” she says, tone allowing no argument. She’s been there and she’s not weak._ _

__

__He doesn’t respond. They stay there, silent and still, for a while. Until Jessica can’t take it anymore. She feels like she needs to do something._ _

__

__“Okay. You obviously can’t function right now, and are currently feeling like shit because of that. Correct?” she puts her hands on her hips._ _

__

__“...Yeah.” his voice is quiet and it takes him time to respond._ _

__

__“Can I temporarily help with some of that?”_ _

__

__“Please.”_ _

__

__“I’m going to pull you up now, and we’re going to punch some people together. That okay?” she pauses. “If it’s not, that’s fine. You don’t have to.”_ _

__

__“No. That sounds. Good.”_ _

__

__She reaches down, grabs his arm and pulls him upright easily. He takes a deep breath and stretches a bit._ _

__

__“I’m fine now. Thank you.” he says, trying to get rid of any vulnerability now that he’s upright._ _

__

__“You’re not, and you’re welcome.” she grabs his arm again and drags him towards the door. “Come on.”_ _

__

__He lets himself be pulled along, apparently having no energy, which is not surprising. She keeps him moving through the rest of the building and down to the street. She keeps him moving through several fights._ _

__

__It’s fun, for her, at least. He’s a good fighter, probably even better when he isn’t depressed, and she likes having someone to fight alongside. She likes having someone to watch her back sometimes. It was nice with Luke, and she didn’t really realize she missed it._ _

__

__Daredevil fights very differently from Luke, though. Luke fights like an immovable object. Daredevil doesn’t stop moving, now that he’s up. There’s a large (and impressive, though she’d never admit it) amount of flips and things, though she thinks he’d be doing even more of them if he had more energy._ _

__

__He’s not very motivated though, and she thinks he’d really like to just curl up into a ball right now. She watches him carefully through every fight, and while he definitely seems better for doing this, he’s still not really happy. She calls it after the fourth mugger._ _

__

__"I'm done," she says._ _

__

__“Can you get home?” she almost asks, before deciding instead on, “Will you go home now?”_ _

__

__“Yes,” he says, sounding confused by why she thinks she needs to asks that._ _

__

__“Good. Go do that.”_ _

__

__“Thanks,” he says, turning to climb up the fire escape near him to the top of the building. She follows him, not far behind for the beginning of his trip, and they both know he’s aware of her presence, but neither of the say anything. After a few minutes she’s satisfied that he’ll make it, and she breaks off to head for her own apartment._ _

__

__She feels good. She hopes he will too._ _

__

__\-------_ _

__

__Now she’s kind of worried about Daredevil. Which is annoying. She didn’t need any more people to be worried about. She’s already always worried about Trish and Malcolm, and she worries about Luke sometimes, when she lets herself think about him. And the more she watches that Murdock guy working with her, the more she thinks she should be worried about him too._ _

__

__Worrying about people sucks._ _

__

__She’s been thinking about Daredevil for most of the day, about how to help him, even though it isn’t her problem. But people could get hurt if he makes a mistake on the job. He could get really hurt. So yeah, she’s a little worried. And it’s distracting her from her work._ _

__

__She puts down the files she’s been scanning for the past half hour and stares out the windows of her office. Malcolm is typing on his laptop with his earbuds plugged into his phone, his head moving slightly to music Jessica can’t hear. In the far office, Murdock looks like he’s trying to work, but he also looks like he can barely keep his head up, and he keeps twitching in time with Malcolm’s nodding._ _

__

__The guy has seemed empty the whole time she’s been here. She’s paid attention to him, because he’s a stranger who now has at least partial access to her life, thanks to the office sharing. And he’s seen her vulnerable, thanks to the panic attack. He seems like an okay guy, but she hasn’t found him much of a mystery. But after seeing Daredevil like that last night, Murdock’s mood now seems more important, more familiar._ _

__

__She looks at the line of bruises down the side of his face and remembers Daredevil taking a punch to the cheek the night before._ _

__

__Why would Daredevil come back to the same rooftop so often? Because it’s close, convenient, known? Why does he seem invested in Jessica without really knowing her? Is it because he’s met her before? Because he sees her every day?_ _

__

__It’s strange, and it feels too easy, ridiculous that he would be this close, right in front of her, but it fits, matches the depression and the injuries, and it answers her questions about the roof._ _

__

__Yeah, she knows who Daredevil is. And it took about a minute to find out. She’s a good detective. (and he's an idiot)_ _

__

__And now she’s more worried about him. Damn._ _

__

__She wonders whether he’d listen to her more during the day. Maybe. Worth a shot._ _

__

__She can’t believe she’s going to do this. This is going to be painful for both of them. But she’ll try it, just this once._ _

__

__She gets up from her desk and walks across the office. Malcolm looks up at her when she walks past. She pauses in front of him. He pulls out one earbud and tilts his head towards Murdock questioningly. She shrugs. He smiles and nods towards the other office. She rolls her eyes at him and pushes open the door to Murdock’s office._ _

__

__“You know, talking helps. Or so they tell me,” she says when he looks up._ _

__

__\-------_ _

__

__"Hey, Jones. Got any band aids?" Daredevil says, as soon as she opens the door to the roof. She nearly hits him when she opens the door, he’s standing so close. He has one hand positioned over his ribs, and he’s bent over slightly. Jessica thinks he may need something more serious than band aids._ _

__

__“What is wrong with you?” Jessica asks flatly, and it could be either a questions about his injuries or his mental state._ _

__

__“Oh, so many things,” Daredevil says, and while the words should sound like a joke, his tone isn’t light at all. “but right now, I think I have some bruised ribs.”_ _

__

__Jessica sighs loudly. She can’t believe she’s going to do this. “I have cling-wrap.”_ _

__

__“Thanks.” he says, with a small grateful smile, and just stands there awkwardly, waiting._ _

__

__“Just stay here, I’ll go get it.” she sighs again and turns around to go back to the office. She pulls the cling-wrap out of a drawer in her desk. She’s been keeping it here for these kind of occasions, but she should really invest in a real first aid kit. She grabs some paper towels and tape too, just to be safe. She ran out of bandages last week. Yeah, she needs to get on top of this first aid thing. Especially with her job, and the vigilante who crashes on her roof._ _

__

__Though he hasn’t been around for the past few weeks. Until tonight when he shows up injured. Which means she hasn’t had time to confront him about being Matt Murdock and working in the same office as her. She didn’t want to do it in said office, with more room for denial, and she knew him better as Daredevil anyway. So she had waited, and checked the roof every night. And he hadn’t shown. She would have been more worried if Murdock hadn’t come into work on time every day._ _

__

__And he’s seeming better around the office. She’s been passing work his way, divorcees and restraining orders, and it seems to be helping get him busy. She’s happy with the new partnership thing she’s started. Which is surprising to her, but it makes her clients happy, and it looks like it’s making Murdock less sad, so she’ll use that to explain her approval, and not mention her growing like for Matt._ _

__

__Still, the secret identity thing is floating around her mind, and she thinks she should let him know she knows. So now that Daredevil’s making an appearance again, maybe it’s time to speak up?_ _

__

__When she gets back up, Daredevil has somehow managed to remove the top part of his costume thing. He has a large cluster of growing bruises on his left side, probably the injury he was talking about. Also some deep cuts on his right side that he failed to tell her about._ _

__

__“Any other injuries you forgot to mention?” she says, nodding at the cuts as she unrolls some cling-wrap._ _

__

__“Nothing that matters,” he says._ _

__

__She rolls her eyes and doesn’t say anything else, just presses the plastic to his stomach and begins wrapping it around his chest._ _

__

__“I hope you have better stuff at home, because this is pretty short term. Trust me.” she watches red patches form under the cling-wrap from the cuts on his one side. Yeah, this will not last long. But she’s willing to bet that he won’t get anything better._ _

__

__“Trust me? You’ve used this before?” he asks, avoiding the whole short term fix issue._ _

__

__“Yeah. Got hit by a truck. And I’m not sure how it’ll go for someone without my powers.” she presses down the plastic, having wrapped his ribs up as much as she can._ _

__

__“Hit by a truck. Wow. You’re strong.” he says this a lot, she’s noticing, ‘you’re strong’. She’s starting to think it might have to do with more than muscle._ _

__

__“Uh huh. Thanks.”_ _

__

__He pokes at the cling-wrap like an idiot, before apparently deciding that it’s up to his standards. Then he picks up the top part of his costume and scratches at the back of his neck, in a sort of embarrassed gesture._ _

__

__“Thanks.” he says, turning to walk away, preparing to jump off the roof. He still hasn’t put the armor back on._ _

__

__“Yeah.” she shrugs and heads back for the door. She pauses and decides to go for it._ _

__

__“Hey!” she shouts, from the doorway, noticing he hasn’t lept yet._ _

__

__“What?” he asks._ _

__

__“Don’t come into the office tomorrow with more injuries. That stuff won’t hold through another fight.” she pulls open the door and waits for the shocked response._ _

__

__She is not disappointed._ _

__

__“What? Office? What office?” he sounds scared, his voice full of forced confusion._ _

__

__“Our office. The one we work in. In this building. Do you have a concussion too?” maybe it's mean of her, but this is kind of fun._ _

__

__“I’m not. I don’t-” he stumbles before giving up and slumping. “How?”_ _

__

__“The depression, the injuries, the weird appreciation for this roof. Not hard.”_ _

__

__“Shit.” he shakes his head. “Are you going to-”_ _

__

__“Tell anyone? No.” she’s a little hurt that he thinks she might, but it’s a valid worry._ _

__

__“Thanks.” he sounds really genuinely grateful for something that doesn’t seem very noteworthy to her._ _

__

__“For the third time tonight, no problem. Bye.” and that’s out of the way. She closes the door before he can say thank you again and stands in the stairwell for a bit. Work tomorrow might be a bit awkward._ _

__

__\-------_ _

__

__He’s not wearing the costume when he arrives on the roof a few nights later. No mask, no armor, just Matt Murdock, standing in the rooftop doorway. She’s sitting on the edge of the roof, facing him, and she waves him over._ _

__

__He holds up a bottle of whiskey. “Got you a gift.”_ _

__

__“You’re a real hero.” she says, intended sarcastically, though it seems to get to him, if the frown that has appeared on his face is any indication. He walks over to her and sits down, looking unhappy._ _

__

__“I’m not a hero. I just hurt people. Cause pain. That’s all I do.” he tries to rein in the angry look on his face. He fails. “A hero is someone who creates something, who solves people’s problems, who makes people’s lives better. They have a real effect. A positive one.”_ _

__

__She doesn’t know where exactly this is coming from, but she thinks she sees where he’s going. She doesn’t like it. Needs to cut it off before he gets any ideas. “I’m not a hero. A hero doesn’t try to run. They don’t let how much something scares them get in the way of what they have to do.”_ _

__

__There’s a break in conversation where Jessica opens the bottle and takes a long drink, before passing it to Matt, who does the same._ _

__

__"Jessica?” he says. She turns to him and raises an eyebrow._ _

__

__"Yeah?"_ _

__

__"I think you're my hero." he’s not looking at her, but it sounds so honest she almost flinches._ _

__

__There’s a long silence. She doesn’t really know what to say to that._ _

__

__"Thanks." Another pause. "Matt. I think you’re a hero."_ _

__

__"Oh.” he swallows like he’s having trouble breathing. “Thanks.”_ _

__

__“Yeah.”_ _

__

__They both stand there for a while, pointedly not looking at the other._ _

__

__She sighs and looks out at the city. She needs to move. She stands and extends a hand to pull him up. “Okay, that was more than enough emotional conversation for me. Want to punch someone?”_ _

__

__He smiles and takes her hand. “Oh, God yes.”_ _


End file.
